In Your Customer’s Shoes

Have you ever thought about what it must be like for the person buying your product?

Right before I took a break from my real life, I did.

One of my potential customers, who happened to be already be an associate of mine, said that they didn’t really believe that if I took my own advice, and I was “some nobody like me”,Â as they put it, that I’d be successful at marketing myself.

I took that comment seriously. The techniques I was going to teach this associate were going to help put him into business for himself, if I was right. If I was wrong, he would have wasted their time and money.

Yes, I had regular clients for them to talk to and testimonials and all that. They ended up hearing all the success stories and deciding to go for it. That’s not the point.

The point is this, if I wasn’t well known, and I didn’t already have a bit of a reputation, would people still trust my methods — even if I gave some of them away for free? I have the advantage that people can research me before they try my product by typing my name into any search engine and seeing what other people say.

What if you don’t have that, as a newbie, what then?

When I was a newbie, I started out as an affiliate marketer, built a list, and gave away freebies and information. But that was four years ago. Is it still a viable method today?

If I was just some unknown person with good ideas, would the testing of those ideas be enough to prove their worth? What does it matter who I am if an approach I tell you to use works?

How much do we rely on social proof, vs hype or someone’s name? Is the plain old truth the best marketing there is? If so, why do people use hype in sales letters?

–>Sidebar<– yeah, I know people are going to say “I don’t buy products from people because of who they are.” That’s total bullshit.

When you buy Pepsi, and decide you like Pepsi, you’ll keep buying Pepsi, even if it’s more expensive, until you have a reason to stop. It doesn’t matter if it’s car stereos, televisions, laptops, ebooks or blow jobs, if a person has a preference, they’ll stick with that preference until they have reason to change, sometimes even if they have to go out of their way to get it.

Sometimes the preference is whatever’s cheapest. That’s still a preference, it’s still a type of brand loyalty.

Answering all these questions is part of what made me start this blog, and that’s part of the theory I’m testing out.

Why am I doing it myself and not just looking over some newbie’s shoulder?

Because I want to know what it’s like again to be new, or as close as I can get.

Because I’m on kind of a forced vacation due to my recently failing health, and doing this as a “hobby” is the only way I can keep my family from hiding my laptop.

I’m being anonymous because I refuse to just outright lie and pretend I’m an average Joe. The only other truthful option is anonymity.

There’s no mystery. There’s no site launch. I’m not starting a new company. I’m not selling anything. I can’t find out what I want to know first hand any other way.